Photo by John MacMurray

The other day I was talking with someone about eternal life. I had been saying that eternal life is the life of the Triune God and that it becomes ours because we know God. In other words, we experience eternal life because we say “yes” to a relationship with them. The Incarnation surely revealed this, yes?

My friend thanked me for my reminder and then politely corrected me explaining, “The relationship means nothing if I don’t have the “right doctrine”, which could only be found in a book—the Bible.”

I thanked him for his thoughts. As I was contemplating what I would say his wife added, “How do we come to know God if it isn’t through studying a book?

Sadly, we were interrupted and I never got to answer. The next day I was still thinking about the conversation and how much I would have enjoyed discussing her question—because it’s a good and legitimate question—especially if you come from the tradition I was raised in.

What follows is not quite an “answer” but more of a starting point to one.

The Bible gives us metaphors, anthropomorphisms, names, and stories and all of it helps us begin to know something about what God is like, which may or may not lead us to know him. Decades of studying and teaching the Bible has helped me tremendously but to equate knowing a text with knowing a person is, well, just a bit foolish, yes? If God is a person (actually three persons) then knowing him requires an encounter with him, not just a book.

The Triune God does not want to be known as the invisible, metaphysical deity we conjure in our minds, who we desperately hope hears our prayers.